505 



Senator Wirth. It seems to me this agrees with Mr. Mathisen's 

 case study and what others have said. Maybe what we ought to be 

 doing is asking the Forest Service to incorporate findings Hke this 

 and from the National Marine Fisheries Service. I am not quite 

 sure how to do it, but we are hearing from all of you, and we heard 

 yesterday, the great importance of forest riparian quality for fish 

 habitat and spawning and your industry. It seems to me that 

 maybe we ought to try to do more to encourage the Forest Service 

 to be looking at that and incorporating those values. 



May I ask for specific recommendations in our legislation to re- 

 quire the Forest Service to do that, which other people have 

 thought were appropriate? It seems to me you are suggesting in 

 your testimony that these are very important and the Forest Serv- 

 ice ought to attempt more leverage than they have so far. 



Mr. Wyman. Clearly, under the TLMP process, we are given a 

 chance to comment like a full advisory committee is, but when the 

 planning process calls for the mill to pick out maybe double what 

 they need for that current period and then we are asked to com- 

 ment on double what they need for the next five years and we as 

 an advisory committee, we only meet like twice a month, maybe in 

 the evenings in the winter months, and we do not have the staff. 

 We might make certain recommendations, but there is so much 

 area they are asking us to consider that we do not have the staff 

 and biologists to sit there and go through all of the data and sift it 

 out and follow through on our recommendations. We are just not 

 included in the process and the Fish and Game — Alaska Parks, 

 Fish and Game helps somewhat, but we still do not get all of the 

 input and all data and all of the staff that we need to follow 

 through on our recommendations. 



Senator Wirth. I understand that. Maybe there is a way in 

 which we can help on that by putting some things in whatever leg- 

 islation passes that is going to make the Forest Service attend to 

 these issues a little more carefully. 



Finally, I am struck by you being here, Mr. Williams, and all of 

 you being here, and I guess by the growing sense of concern. Is it 

 that you are all more active on this subject than you were five 

 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? And, if so, can you generalize 

 as to why that is the case? You might want to comment on that, 

 Mr. Wyman, Mr. Williams, any one of you. 



Mr. Williams. It is not just as fishermen, or as far as the South- 

 east economy, it is not real easy to come up and say things that we 

 feel may have an effect on the industry. We do not have a vendetta 

 against the pulp industry or that kind of thing. There are a 

 number of fishing families involved in this and it has taken a long 

 time for people to realize that the volume of catch that we look at 

 over the long term, and the kind of effects we are going to see cu- 

 mulatively are going to have an impact. As Phil spoke about ini- 

 tially, we were told things like clearcutting would be good for deer, 

 clearcutting would not harm fish, and those kinds of things. And 

 now research has proven that that is not true, and we are realizing 

 that given the volume of major cuts that we have seen that was 

 not initially planned when the pulp mill contracts came out and 

 the extra land volume that is being impacted, it is going to affect 



